Founded 1968 Newspaper Workers | ||
Ideology CommunismMarxism–LeninismWorkerism | ||
The Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist), often abbreviated as CPB-ML, is a British Marxist-Leninist political party. It originated in 1968 as an anti-revisionist split from the Communist Party of Great Britain and was chaired by Reg Birch until 1985. The official programme of the party since 1972 has been The British Working Class and its Party. The publication of the CPB-ML was originally known as The Worker, but is today called Workers.
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History
The party was formed in 1968 by Reg Birch as a Maoist, anti-revisionist breakaway from the Communist Party of Great Britain, siding with the Communist Party of China in the Sino-Soviet split. The CPB(M-L) then sided with Enver Hoxha in the Sino-Albanian split of the 1970s.
A small number of members split from the party in 1975, forming the Nottingham Communist Group. In 1976, three branches of the CPB(M-L) split and formed the Communist Workers Movement, initially under the leadership of Ian Williams - which group later joined the Revolutionary Communist League of Britain.
In the 1980s, the CPB(M-L) came to support the Soviet Union again for a period, before dropping this line over Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. More recently, the CPB(M-L) has developed a national line for Britain: "Rebuild Britain"; the party is strongly opposed to the European Union.
The party published The Worker from 1969 until 2000, when it became Workers.
Party members focus on work in the labour movement.
Notable members
Notable early members of the CPB(M-L) included journalists and academics Roy Greenslade and Steve Hewlett and comedian and author Alexei Sayle.
Immigration
The Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist) is notable for its opposition to mass immigration. In a statement from 2005 in their publication Workers, the party stated that it regards the recent mass immigration from Eastern Europe into Britain as a deliberate plan by the capitalist ruling class to use "cheap labour" to "undermine the wages and conditions of British workers." It also stressed concerns in the same article that this recent mass immigration was having the effect of impacting national infrastructure; schools, hospitals and transport; by overloading them, to the detriment of the indigenous working-class.